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Hi, friends.

Another year of challenges has nearly passed by. Next year, we're shuffling things up a bit where the challenges are concerned. Staci will be shifting over to create and moderate the yearly challenges. Kate will be taking on the monthly challenges (including Genre Surprise). I will still be presenting the six-month and eighteen-month challenges as well as Hidden Gems and Book-Buyer's Therapy.

It's time for us to get some feedback on last year's challenges. That's where you come in!

Here is the link to this year's full list of challenges: 2023 Challenges

In each category (eighteen-month, yearly, six-month, and monthly), what are your top three favorite challenges? What were your three least favorite challenges per category?

If you could see one new challenge added, what would it be?

I have really been enjoying the 18 month CFD's Library adventure challenge. I have participated in the I spy challenge and the hunting in the library challenge. I also enjoy the monthly challenge. In looking at all the challenges, I might have participated in explore the library challenge if it was for a year. I am a slow reader and reading that many books in 6 months would be a challenge for me even if they were short books.
My only suggestion would be to maybe have fewer challenges. I found one I forgot I was participating in. (LOL)

I am participating in eleven yearly challenges, and keep track of them in my Evernote app. A few monthly ones as well; but have not done well with those.
Since most authors keep their locations to the U. S., I only managed three for Canada and one for North America. Twenty-one though for Around the World. Missed twelve of U.S. Alphabet Soup - no Q for authors, Q or U for characters, X for location, or Q and Z for titles.
Still a month to go though.

Beth - ;)
in Calgary

I just love all of the challenges and participate in a lot of them. I especially love the 18 month and yearly ones that are going right now. Those are my favorite because I have more time to work towards them. The Listopia has been one of my favorites! I've also really enjoyed the ABC-123 challenge and like that it had more than one category of things to complete. I also enjoy the monthly challenges with Staci as well as how specific Genre Surprise was this year. Pick a book is fun as well, getting to see if anyone elses list matches anything on my TBR. I also really like the cover color challenge because it helped me quickly choose next books to read just based of cover color. To my surprise, the animal challenge was also one of my favorites. I found myself jumping to the challenge list any time I saw an animal in a book and don't think I'd ever noticed how many books mention animals so often!

My least favorites are probably the name challenges because I find it so hit or miss.

I would love to see a yearly Title Mania. As well as some type of yearly challenge to go specifically through books we actually own. Maybe something similar to Pick A Book For Me where each month, those participating get to choose one thing from a list of things previously selected to focus on that month. It could be a hefty list of participant suggestions so each month we focus on clearing our "I Own" books through things like, "this month read books with authors who have a y in their name" or, "read books with animals on the cover". If there aren't at least 12 participants, dice can be thrown on remaining months to pick list item we complete. Just a suggestion!

Sorry all that feedback is so long. I SO appreciate all of the work the admin team puts into keeping these challenges up to date as well as the time and effort it must take to keep the group engaging. This group is my favorite online community and the challenges are my favorite thing I participate in. :)

My favorite challenges are ones that help me go through my TBR lists. I enjoyed the Grag Bag challenge and am enjoying the Library Adventure. I did not take part in the TBR Crusher but I think that would be one I would enjoy also. I like the ones where you search through your lists of books to meet a certain goal.

I like Crystal's suggestion of focusing on "I Own" books.

I like that there is a variety of challenges focusing on different things because no one is going to take part in every challenge. Keep up the great work, Ladies! Looking forward to see what unique challenges you have in store for us. Thanks for all your hard work!

Top three in yearly:
Digging Up History
ABC-123
Finish the Series

Not sure where others fit but top three in non-yearly:
Popular Names
Hidden Gems
Pick a book for me

New Challenge:
Reading through the Ages - Books set in different time periods from the 1700's through present day.

Are there any monthly challenges that y'all definitely want to see kept around? Are there ones that you feel might have 'overstayed' their welcome? Does anyone have any suggestions for a new monthly 'theme/challenge'?🙂

@Kate: I wouldn't mind seeing Brides, Christmas, and Luck of the Irish next year. I'll think about the new, monthly challenges/

I don’t think anything needs to be changed. You guys are doing an amazing job at keeping everyone engaged and adding a fun element to reading. Thank you for all your hard work. Personally, I’m unable to do the challenges for newly released books for each year and most of the monthly reads. My library is a smaller one, they don’t have a large selection. I prefer the broader challenges like the genre, Thanksgiving, and Christmas reads. I like that you have multiple challenges to choose from, so we can all find something we can participate in.

Keep the feedback coming! It's so helpful as we plan for 2024.

My feedback for challenges:

Monthly Challenges
Favorites
Author of the Month
Continuing Series already started

Quarterly Challenges
Favorites
Armed Forces

Six Month Challenges
Favorites
Statehood - this was a favorite among all of the challenges

Annual Challenges
Favorites
New releases
New to me authors
Series

Look forward to another great year of reading!

Thanks for the feedback, y'all! Keep it coming, as it definitely helps us know in which direction to shift or adjust things for the upcoming year.

I'm going to echo some others - you all are doing a great job and I love the variety of challenges you provide. I want to thank you all for making reading so much fun and having challenges that encourage us to look at books and our reading in different ways. Thanks to these wonderful challenges I have discovered over 100 new to me authors and have read over 300 books this year (my usual annual total is 75-100)!

Here are my favorites because of how they challenged me:

18-month challenges (I've only been in the group long enough to do the current ones)
- Tumbling Titles
- Listopia Reading Lists
- CFD's Library Adventure

Yearly Challenges (had more than 3)
- ABC-123
- New Authors to You
- Finish the Series
- Navigating North America
- Cloak and Dagger (my favorite genres)

6-month challenges (had more than 3)
- Genre Surprise
- USA Statehood
- End to End
- Title Mania
- I Spy

Quarterly challenges (had more than 3)
- Mottos of the Armed Forces
- Suspense Scavenger Hunt
- Christmas Songs Word Search
- Movie Title Spell-Out

Monthly challenges
- Monthly Challenges - favorite topics were - Manpower, Wedding Season, The Vowels Have It, Twinning, Suspense/Mystery/Thriller, Thanks & Christmas Reads
- Author of the Month
- Hidden Gems

Like Staci, Statehood was a favorite of mine among all the challenges and I loved the various ways to explore new/different genres.

If I had to pick any least favorites, they would be the quarterly popular names and weather of the seasons.

Like Heather, the challenges with new releases are hard for me because of how long it takes my library to get the small set they do.

Thanks again for such a diverse set of challenges to choose from.

Concerning ideas for next year, one of my other groups does a yearly mix-n-match genre challenge that I really enjoy and I think it would be a good compliment to a challenge like Genre Surprise.

Looking forward to another year of fun challenges and great year of reading!

Kate wrote: "Are there any monthly challenges that y'all definitely want to see kept around? Are there ones that you feel might have 'overstayed' their welcome? Does anyone have any suggestions for a new monthl..."

Kate - I would like to see the following ones kept: Manpower, The Vowels Have It, Twinning, Suspense/Mystery/Thriller, Thanks & Christmas Reads.

Some ideas for others
- for June (Wedding Season) - possibly change to Brides or even Mail Order Brides
- for January - thinking about Time - possibly one that focuses on stories with dual time lines
- for July - two ideas come to mind - either books dealing with the birth of our nation/take place in that time period OR military fiction

I'll see if I can think of any others.

Karen wrote: "I'm going to echo some others - you all are doing a great job and I love the variety of challenges you provide. I want to thank you all for making reading so much fun and having challenges that enc..."

could you tell me more about the 'mix and match' thing please, Karen?🙂

Sure. The challenge in the other group is called "Genre Mix-n-Match". You choose 10 genres, that must be chosen at the start and then you read 5 books for each of the genres you have chosen (50 books total to complete it). Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Thanks for the info, Karen . . . that sounds intriguing and I will definitely file it away for further consideration!

Kate, I host that challenge in Book Lovers' Reading Challenges, a group I created a couple years ago. Here's the link to the current genre mix-n-match challenge. Feel free to create a monthly challenge out of it. I love sharing challenge ideas!

/topic/show/...

Lovely thoughts, friends! I enjoy reading your feedback and your kind words. It's a pleasure to help bring the challenges to you each year.

Thanks, Andrea!

You're welcome, Kate.

I echo Heather and Bridget's thoughts that not much needs to be changed. "I like that there is a variety of challenges focusing on different things because no one is going to take part in every challenge."

The variety and length of challenges can fit a lot of people’s interest, time, stashes, pocketbook, and library availability.

I also use my library 99.9%, so I find challenges that fit that. I would be broke if I bought all the books I read. I know that doesn’t sound supportive to the authors but I’m very selective on those that I buy because of my budget.

This year I personally challenged myself with monthly challenges for the variety and step up a “time frame� challenge:
Author of the Month- found new to me authors; some I enjoyed and some were meh
Monthly Challenges � really enjoyed this with the variety of cover and story ideas

Six-month
I Spy � makes me take a second look at the cover’s artwork. We “eat with our eyes� first so discovering beautiful covers and nuances on the covers are intriguing
Title Mania � Some of them are stumpers!

Yearly
Finish the Series � always a favorite to get those TBR off my list
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth � I’m always researching on a topic.
Put your Ears on (audiobooks) - a new skill I’ve developed to help me “read�

One feature I appreciate is the link Andrea posts of our name posting after the moderator kicks off the month. It helps with a quick find rather than scrolling through posts. I scroll through all the posts periodically to keep up to date on what others are experiencing. I use that thread as my tracker for the challenge. (Does that make sense?)

I also set realistic goals and limited challenges this year so I didn’t stress myself out about all the great reads I know I would want to do. I just kept an eye on those threads that also interested me, so I could get an idea on them, keep them in mind for the future, or find reads for the challenges I did commit to.

Also appreciate just the “housekeeping� threads and organization of the group.

Thank you for allowing us this feedback. Keep up the good work everyone! I’m looking forward to our 2024 reads 😊

I also appreciated the links Andrea posted that connected our names to a challenge that we needed to keep running tabs on. It was very helpful.

Loraine wrote: "I also appreciated the links Andrea posted that connected our names to a challenge that we needed to keep running tabs on. It was very helpful."
I thought it was very helpful as well . . . which is why I'm going to have my husband remind me how to do the HTML links. 😂😉

Kate, here's how you do the links (but without the asterisks):

<*a href="https*://www*.goodreads.*com/topic/show/22671146-2023-challenge-recap-feedback?comment=268566677#comment_268576530">Kate<*/a>

It will look like this when the asterisks are removed: Kate

To get the link to put between the quotation marks, I simply right-click on the time stamp for the comment I want to link to, then select Copy Link Address.

I'm glad y'all find the links helpful. I've borrowed that from another group, because I found it helpful there as well.

I love this group's challenges! Well done, ladies! I appreciate the varied types and lengths of challenges. I work through the challenges based on books I own that are on my TBR (in all formats) as well as review books (of which I have many). So many times I am not able to pick a book to read specifically to fit a challenge (for example - book with a tree on cover) if I have a lot of books awaiting review and none of them have trees on the cover. But, sometimes I am able to make a specific item work on a challenge from my review books.

I would also like to say that having the name links on challenges made it so much easier to use and I hope that name links can be used in all challenges next year.

Monthly challenge favorites:
1. Hidden Gems
2. Monthly Challenge
3. Pick a Book for Me 2023

Quarterly challenge favorites:
1. Popular names of the year (even though this proved very challenging and I didn't come close to getting even half of the names filled, it was fun to see if the names matched for the books I was reading)

Six Month Challenge favorites:
1. I Spy
2. Read the Rainbow
**I really liked the idea of end to end, but did not have much success with it in the time frame allowed. Mostly because of having to work around review books for it. However, I think if it was a longer challenge I could have done better.
**I also liked the Genre Surprise part 1. I didn't do great in it, but it was fun to do it when it fit what I needed to read. However, the part 2 was too specific for me and I ended up not doing any books for that one.

Yearly Challenge favorites
(I enjoyed so many of the yearly challenges. Many were great simply for the tracking aspect of seeing how many books I read with a specific aspect, such as new releases, romance books, etc)
1. Reading Goalpost (I had so much fun seeing how many books I ended up reading each month.)
2. Put Your Ears On (I have read so many audiobooks this year!)
3. Finish the Series
4. Melodrama in the Castle (I have read a lot of Regency books this year)

Eighteen Month Challenge favorites
1. Listopia
2. TBR Crusher (I got a lot done on this one until I just stopped. One thing I would like would be for it not to have to be from a TBR crusher list, just any book on our shelves.)
3. Tumbling Titles (I am enjoying this one so far, although it does have me stumped for the moment as I wait to get to a book to fulfill a letter. But I am glad that it is a long challenge.)


Challenges that I did not enjoy:
Genre Surprise pt 2
Complete the Author (I started out liking this one and did get quite a few books completed for one of the authors, however, I ended up feeling stressed that I didn't complete them all liked I planned.)
Weather of the Seasons (I started out enjoying this one and then just got overwhelmed. This may simply be a "me" problem. So I stopped participating in any that stressed me out).

Thank you for the feedback, friends! It's good to know what worked and what didn't. Sometimes experiments give varied results. :)

I also want to say that I appreciate how much you all engage with all of us on these threads. It is more fun to know that there are others to chat with these books about and celebrate when we meet a goal, etc...

Aw, Brittany! That is SO SWEET. Thank you very much. I am in a very busy season of life right now, so I'll be scaling back on my participation in challenges next year (I hardly ever keep up with posting my updates these days), but I will continue to enjoy seeing all the lovely progress everyone else makes and see which books seem to be the most popular throughout the year.

How about a monthly challenge where you read books by an author team? Such as: Davis Bunn & Janette Oke; Tracie Peterson & Judith Miller; Beverly LaHaye & Terri Blackstock; etc.

I love that idea!

oooh . . . y'all are coming up with some really great ideas for this coming year! thank you!

Loraine wrote: "I also appreciated the links Andrea posted that connected our names to a challenge that we needed to keep running tabs on. It was very helpful."

Where do I find those links?

Beth - ;)
in Calgary

I wanted to echo what sone said earlier. I loved pretty much all of the challenges and the wide variety of options to participate. I found the name linking close to the top really helpful! And I love how much interaction there is with the hosts, as well as the readers. Everyone is so helpful suggesting books and encouraging each other. I love this group :)

I think the one I found most challenging was the weather challenge. Apparently, I don't pay enough attention to the weather when I'm reading or I forget to note when something occurred in an audiobook before it is sent back to the library, so that's one that I decided to drop.

Here are my favorites in each group:

Monthly
Dust off the bookshelves
Vowels
Twinning
Suspense
Spell Thanks
Pick a Book for Me
Hidden Gems

Quarterly
Movie Title Spell-Out
Christmas Songs Word Search

Six-month
Genre Surprise
I Spy
Title Mania

Yearly
Finish the Series

18 month
Book Pyramid
Library Adventure
Listopia Reading Lists
Tumbling Titles

You all do a great job with the challenges! I look forward to them every year. There were so many I wanted to do this year, but I just couldn't get to all of them.

My Favorites:
18 Month
- Library Adventure Challenge
-Listopia

1 Year:
-ABC
-New Authors
-Finish the Series

6 Month
-I Spy
-Statehood
-Title Mania

I didn't get to do any of the Quarter challenges this year, but the Christmas Song Word Search and the Common Names challenges looked really fun. I also didn't do any monthly challenges so I don't really have any feedback on those. I enjoyed all the Challenges I did so I can't think of any to eliminate.
Thank you for all of your hard work! I'm looking forward to next year's challenges!

Beth wrote: "Loraine wrote: "I also appreciated the links Andrea posted that connected our names to a challenge that we needed to keep running tabs on. It was very helpful."

Where do I find those links?"

Beth, the links are the lists of names linked in the "Participants" comment in each of the challenges I host (except for Hidden Gems, as that one doesn't include tracking posts for everyone's books).

Oh, just yours, monthly ones. I was looking at the yearly ones and could not see any names. I did not do well on the few monthly ones I tried.

Beth - ;)
in Calgary

I would like to say thank you to the team for all the challenges this year, I love hanging out on here!

Here is my feedback:

Eighteen-month

What are your top three favourite challenges?

1) Listopia Reading Lists - I’m giving it a good go
2) Grab Bag - But it got overwhelming and failed miserably. Maybe a tweak by having a book a month
3) TBR crusher - Maybe smaller option with less books as again I failed miserably as I got overwhelmed

What were your three least favourite challenges?

I didn’t try the others challenges so I had no least favourite

Yearly

What are your top three favorite challenges?

1) Finish the series
2) New authors to you
3) All the new history challenges as they helped me pay attention to the history I was reading


What were your three least favourite challenges?

1) Hunting Adventure in the Library - only because libraries in the UK don’t have many CF
2) Put Your Ears On Reading - Most of my books are audio so seems a pointless challenge for me

six-month

What are your top three favorite challenges?

1) Genre surprise

What were your three least favourite challenges per category?

I didn’t try the other challenges so I had no least favourites

Monthly

What are your top three favorite challenges?
1) Author of the month
2) Pick a book for me
3) Hidden Gems

Side note: I also managed to take part in some monthly challenges this year and enjoyed thrm - loved the creativity

>b>What were your three least favourite challenges per category?

None I didn’t like

If you could see one new challenge added, what would it be?

Revisit the author - an opportunity to explore books or series by authors you have enjoyed in the past (Happy for this to be developed if someone has additional ideas to make it better :)

These are a few of my favorite things;
Monthly
Author of the Month
The Vowels have it
Twinning

6 month
I Spy
Title Mania
- I struggled with end-to-end. Chose a few books to try to link but fell short and didn't participate

Annual
Reading Goalposts
New-to-Me Authors
Navigating North America

From prior years I liked the book link (don't remember the exact title). Linking one book to another with the same word in title, Author's name or year published. And the one where we to read three books from three categories, either E-reader, paperback, hardback or audio.

Thanks for the feedback, friends! I'm taking lots and lots of notes and will try to incorporate as much as I can in the challenges I create for you for the coming year.

Here were my favourites:

Eighteen Month
TBR Crusher
Listopia
Tumbling Titles

Yearly
ABC-123
Reading Goalpost
World at War
Melodrama in the Castle
Finish the Series

Six Month
I Spy
Read the Rainbow
Title Mania

Quarterly
Barnyard Breakout
Christmas Song Wordsearch
Popular Names of the Year (even though it was hard)

Monthly
Pick a Book for Me
Hidden Gems
Monthly Challenges

I think all the challenges are great. I took on too many, so won't complete everything I wanted to do. So I may just select fewer next year.... we'll see... I say that every year... lol.

A challenge idea would be to read books published in a certain year(s). For example I want to read books published in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019... and so on. Maybe a certain amount from each year, could be earlier than 2016... maybe a certain year each month... 2013 in January, 2014 in Feb and so on up to 2024 in December.

Thanks for all the great challenges!

Oh I like that idea Katrina!

I like your idea too Katrina! I have books on my Kindle clear back to 2013!!

I must be careful with the number of challenges I sign up for. My personality is that of someone who hates seeing missed prompts at the end of the challenge ;-) You are doing a fantastic job with the variety. I limited myself to only a few challenges since I also added non-Christian book challenges to my list in 2023.

My favorites are always Pick a Book for Me and Author of the Month. My least favorite was Book of the Month, but that had nothing to do with the challenge itself. Rather, I'm not so much into the romance genre, and the Book of the Month challenge is very romance-heavy lol. I think that's why I like the Pick a Book one since I get to choose the book I want to read. I'm limited to the author, but not to which of the author's books to read, and I can also consider what is available to me (Kindle Unlimited, library, Everand, etc.). I also like the Library Adventure challenge since it covers a longer period of time.

I know that this is a fiction book group, but it would be fun to include a non-fiction challenge as well since I read those a lot in addition to fiction or open up the other challenges to include not only fiction but also non-fiction books. I don't know how other members feel about that. I'd love it!

I also like challenges that make me read what I already own. I feel so bad sometimes adding books to my TBR when I know there are so many other books still on that TBR waiting to be read.

Simone, I know that in the past, we've had nonfiction challenges as part of the yearly challenges, so keep an eye out to see if that will continue this next year.

How do people feel about the different 'levels' of challenges? I'm specifically speaking to the monthly challenges, which are obviously a lot shorter in duration than the other challenges. Are they useful? Or would you rather the monthlies be an 'I'm In!' kind of thing and not have to say how many books you plan to read in that particular challenge?

Thanks for all the feedback, friends! Please keep it coming.

Kate, I love that you're asking questions for the monthlies.

Staci, is there anything additional you'd like to know from the group, for the yearlies?

I love Katrina's idea about the years!!

Kate wrote: "How do people feel about the different 'levels' of challenges? I'm specifically speaking to the monthly challenges, which are obviously a lot shorter in duration than the other challenges. Are they..."

What a great question Kate! "I'm in" seems sufficient, but it can be fun to estimate how well you'll do for a challenge. I can go either way on this one.

I always join more challenges than I am able to do, but I guess that is the fun of it. These are the ones I enjoy:

Book of the Month

Hidden Gems

Read with a Buddy - I participate in a few of these, but not all
Pick a Book for Me - I may join one month, or not the next

Popular Names - I love the premise of this challenge, maybe make this a 6 month challenge and do it in decades (1850's names, 1910's names, etc.

USA Statehood/Navigating North America - I always like this one, but there are always states I miss

Exploring the Library

I Spy - I liked this one very much, I did better with the objects as opposed to the words

New to You Author

World at War

Tumbling Tiles - I am enjoying this one, my first book just has a lot of odd letters so it is taking me a bit.

I like the idea of a challenge of reading books from each year. Would help clean off some of my shelves.